Michael Phelps is no longer throwing back 12,000 calories of pizza and Red Bull a day

Michael Phelps was already a star back in the heady days of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, having won six golds and two bronze in the previous Athens Olympics — the second-best performance ever at a single Olympics. So, of course, people were interested in seeing what made this power athlete so different from everyone else. And nothing made us mere mortals tremble more than his gargantuan diet of 12,000 calories, which included...

Let that be a lesson to us all: no one can continue to throw down pizza and pancakes like we used to in our youths. Even Michael Phelps, who continues to train two to four hours a day, is on the oatmeal for breakfast train (a sad train to Flavor Town, indeed). Now the most exciting thing in his diet is his footlong meatball sub from Subway, which I'm sure is a totally real daily meal and not just included as part of his sponsorship deal.